Page 74 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

THE POLITICAL MEDIA

majority of British newspapers support one party— the Conservatives,
a pattern of bias which culminated in the early 1990s. Table 4.1
shows the party political affiliations of each national newspaper at
the 1992 general election. Of twenty daily and Sunday titles, six
supported the Labour Party, two declined to declare a preference,
and twelve supported the Conservatives. The Tory-supporting press
accounted for 70 per cent of national newspaper circulation in total,
as compared to Labour’s 27 per cent. This pro-Conservative bias,
consistent with the pattern of press partisanship throughout the
twentieth century, was in sharp contrast both to the spread of votes
in the election (the Tories took 41 per cent of the total votes, compared
to Labour’s 37 per cent and the Liberal Democrats’ 20 per cent) and,
in some cases, such as that of the Daily Star, to the declared party
3
preferences of the readers. Thus the Star, whose readers are
predominantly Labour supporters, took an aggressively anti-Labour
editorial stance. For this reason, the press have been viewed by many
as instruments of ideological indoctrination, in the service of the
wealthiest and most powerful of Britain’s political parties. Chinks in
the armour, such as the Financial Times’ tentative endorsement of
the Labour Party in 1992, were viewed as the exceptions which proved
the rule. Events since 1992 have challenged that perception, however.
For reasons which I discuss in more detail elsewhere (McNair, 1999),
the ‘Tory press’, as it was once quite justifiably described, began to
shift its editorial allegiances after 1994. Sleaze (moral and political—
the cash-for-questions scandal mainly concerned Tory MPs)
surrounding the governing party; the emergence of a remodelled
Labour Party with the election of Tony Blair as leader in 1994; and
Labour’s sustained courting of the press in the run-up to the 1997
poll, all contributed to a structure of editorial bias which was almost
the exact reverse of that prevailing in 1992 (see Table 4.2). This
time, only seven daily and Sunday titles urged their readers to vote
for the Conservatives, while eleven backed Labour. The Sun and the
Star in particular, both traditionally Tory ‘cheerleaders’, came out
for Labour.
That the overwhelming majority of the British press have
consistently supported the party of big business is not seriously in
dispute. What has changed since 1992 is the readiness of the still
conservative (with a small ‘c’) British press to view Labour as a party
it can do business with. Still in dispute, however, is the impact which
media coverage has on political behaviour. Harrop and Scammell
state that ‘the Conservative tabloids generally, and the Sun in
particular, did a good propaganda job for the party in the last crucial

57